Research on how adolescents see their future is reviewed with reference to the three basic processes involved in orientation to the future: motivation, planning, and evaluation. The results suggest that adolescents' goals and interests concern the major developmental tasks of late adolescence and early adulthood, reflecting anticipated life-span development. Such anticipation accounts for a sizeable number of the age, sex, socioeconomic status, and cultural differences in the content and temporal extention of future orientation. The review also showed that the levels of planning and internality concerning the future increase with age. Family context was also found to influence adolescents' future-oriented interests, plans, causal attributions, and affects. Finally, directions for future research are identified.
Samenvatting